FERNDALE, Wash. — A large gathering of law enforcement personnel converged on a residential area in the vicinity of Thornton Street and Malloy Avenue in Ferndale following a pursuit of a pickup truck involved in a hit and run incident with a Lummi Nation Police patrol vehicle.
According to first responder radio transmissions at the time, about 7:45am on Thursday, February 20, 2025, Lummi Nation Police personnel were in the area of a vacant house in the Sandy Point Heights neighborhood when they noticed a dark pickup truck leaving the area. The pickup rammed the police vehicle and proceeded north on Lake Terrell Road toward Slater Road.
Police followed the pickup as it meandered through west county roads, sometimes slowly and at least once at speeds around 100mph. Other law enforcement agencies joined the effort.
About 8am, it was reported a spike strip was successfully deployed by Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office personnel and the pickup’s tires began breaking apart.
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The pursuit entered Ferndale city limits at Douglas Road and continued onto Washington Street and past the high school on Malloy Avenue. The suspect driver fled his vehicle on foot in the vicinity of Thornton Street and Malloy Avenue.
The suspect was seen on foot fleeing through residential yards and citizens provided reports of sighting to pursuing law enforcement personnel.
Witnesses report the pickup ended up in a resident’s backyard when the suspect fled on foot.
About 8:15am, it was reported the suspect had been detained.
Lummi Nation Police booked Calvin Ralph James, Jr., age 39, into Whatcom County Jail about 9:30am. He was charged with suspicion of the following crimes to be tried in Lummi Tribal Court.
- attempting to elude a police vehicle
- reckless driving
- possession or sale of stolen property
- 2 counts of 1st degree assault
James has prior felony convictions in Whatcom County Superior Court including eluding, burglary and possession of a stolen vehicle.
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Yes this man hit our home. He broke into all three of our cars, ransacked them, stole garage door openers, left a kayak backpack with swim goggles on drivers seat of our car, with a pile of keys and two in plastic key fobs, left a phone book and a strip of photo booth pictures likely from another vehicle. From a minivan took husbands boyscout uniform shirt on a hanger put in a wheel barrel then piled all the white chess pieces of a oversized yard chess set into wheel barrel like he was going to steal them. Then he went to side yard drove our riding lawn mower into trees/ditch and stole key.
Theif moved onto next neighborhood breaking into more cars, and stealing one.
Police were extraordinary in quickly apprehending this individual and already returned our lawn mower key found on him the day yesterday this all happened!! Our family is incredibly grateful that this fellow same day of incident was caught. Sounded like a lot of police efforts involved and glad no one is hurt from this. Hoping individual put away for long time by our courts. Huge thanks to all the police Bellingham, Ferndale, and Lummi for catching this bad guy!